One of the big but largely under-appreciated features of Elemental: Fallen Enchantress is the new random generation.

In Elemental: War of Magic, the maps were random but the continents were not.  This meant, after awhile, players knew “the lay out of the land”.

Now, having a random world generator is a non-trivial thing as those who have written them can tell you. Especially if you want a map that is “fun” (i.e. no one cut off, reasonably fair, and always interesting).

So here are 3 random starting locations to give you a taste of how different things are from game to game.

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Now all this is only interesting if the worlds themselves are interesting. And this is a tough thing because interesting is in the eye of the beholder.

On tiny maps, we made the continents kind of square-ish so we could fit as much “stuff” on the map as we could. But as you get larger, the interesting shaped continents really come into play.  You will never see that world I just posted again because it was randomly generated.

At tradeshows I’ve talked to my friends at Firaxis (Civilization series) about the map generation “challenge” and it is one of the most programming intensive pieces of strategy game writing.

The philosophy of random map generation is different from game to game. Are we looking for “realistic” or “fun” or somewhere in-between?  For Fallen Enchantress, we focused on continents that are interesting and otherworldly that present a lot of opportunity for choke points and exploration.

Here’s another one you’ll never see again:

For those of you not familiar with Elemental, I’m using a cheat key to hide the fog of war (and yea, I’m gonna call it that because I’m lazy).  So it wouldn’t look quite like this in an actual game as you wouldn’t get to see all this at once.

We heard endless about the unsubstantiated charge that some Tea Partier spat on an African American congressman but amazingly, the atrocious behavior of the Occupy movement has largely been ignored or excused.

I have friends and family who practically seethe with hatred towards “fucking tea baggers” who I know are sympathetic for the Occupy Wall Street people. What the hell is the matter with these people?

While I don’t consider myself a “Tea Partier”, I cannot grasp the antipathy directed towards people who peacefully lobby for smaller government while remaining mum about the disgusting OWS behavior.

Check this out:

For those of you new to Stardock’s games, let me say, welcome! We’re glad you’re here!

For those of you who are veterans, thanks for hanging out with us.

I want to make sure users are fully aware, because it comes up sometimes, that we have intentions/plans for many things and on the other hand we have promises/requirements/obligations.

The former means, we intend to do something but it is not a guarantee. The latter means, yes, it’ll be in there.

Let’s start for the promises for FE:

1. It won’t be released until we are happy with it.  Now, truth be told, I was pretty happy with WOM.  I was, as many may recall, working 100+ hours per week for the entire Summer before it was released.  With Derek in charge, I can go back to my traditional Executive producer role (ala GalCiv and Sins of a Solar Empire and to a lesser extent Demigod) which usually involves me pooping on the game for months prior to release and telling everyone internally how terrible the game is. I much prefer to distribute the insults rather than aborb them.
2. The campaign will be good and engaging.
3. The randomly generated maps will include randomly generated continents. WOM had randomly generated maps on pre-built continents.
4. There will be a lot of spells. I don’t know what the final count will be. But they will be interesting, important, and exciting.
5. There will be a lot of soul to the game. The players will talk to you in interesting ways. There is a lot of backstory for pretty much everything.
6. There will be a lot more quests. There’s a ton of quests in FE. And unlike in WOM, where the quests were virtually all written by me in the middle of the night in the final several weeks (don’t ask me why I had to write these…) these quests are a collaboration between fantasy author David Stern and Toby (associate producer).
7. Tactical Battles are totally different than WOM. It’s all initiative based now. No more “rounds”. Eliminates a ton of potential cheese and makes magic and tactics matter more.
8. EVERYONE who bought Elemental: War of Magic in 2010 will get FE for free. Automatically.

Now, let’s talk about intentions for FE:

1. We intend for there to be spells with a casting time that can then be countered.  This is almost certain to make it in but we have not made it a “Requirement”.  It’ll be based on how “fun” they play out.
2. We intend there to be multiplayer of up to 16 people. However, it is not a requirement. If it would result in a lot of resources being siphoned off from the single player experience or would, on its own, result in delaying the release, it’ll get cut.
3. We intend to have vastly more modding abilities in than any game we’ve ever made.  Actually, this is more close to a promise because the game is almost exclusively XML driven because of the project management system (coders don’t implement game design, the producers do and it’s XML driven via spread sheets and such). The AI makes heavy use of this. 
4. We intend to have a almost completely new sound track. This isn’t a promise. We’ve gotten a lot of new music and effects in and have put them in but we wouldn’t delay the game over making sure all the music and sound is new.
5. We intend to have Fallen Enchantress at retail. But because we won’t commit to a release date, we can’t promise this.
6. We intend to have significant faction differentiation. In War of Magic, the Empires all shared the same tech tree and the Kingdoms had their own. Other than that, each faction only had minor differences.  Now, all of the factions are humanoids (we don’t have a spider race, for instance) but we intend for each faction to look and play very differently. How successful we are on this will be in the eye of the beholder.  But we will be making a best effort here to make them as different as we can as budget allows (i.e. we’re not willing to push the date back so that we can have an insectoid race.

Over the years, I’ve seen so many people with high potential diminish their prospects for success in business because they lacked a few key axioms of business.

To that end, I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned (often the hard way) about what is what in business:

#1 Risk capital trumps “sweat equity”.  The guy willing to risk real dollars is worth 100X as much as the guy who is willing to “risk” working hard for some period of time. If you disagree, you’ve probably never remortgaged your house to pay for something you believe in.

#2 NEVER burn bridges.  If you read Steve Jobs book, one of the things that becomes clear is that this is a person who, while often mean, was pretty good at maintaining relationships. Even after Steve Jobs founded Apple, he would regularly go back to his former employer (Atari) and get advice or help in some form or other. 

#3 It really is “just business”.  If it is good for the company, it is good for the company. A fierce competitor today may be a partner tomorrow. Don’t make business decisions from a place of emotion. I’ve had to overrule managers in teaming up with companies because those companies had competed with us in some unrelated area in the past. It’s just business.

#4 Understand your compensation system.  You pay people for a specific reason. A reason that should be clearly defined and understood by both parties. Never compensate someone to try to win “good will”.  I’ve learned this the hard way. No matter how big the bonus for a “job well done” it will rarely build long-term loyalty or good will. Once you start own that road, people will become resentful because in their mind their contribution to the success on a project is always far greater than your estimation of their contribution (see rule #1 for a common example). The best policy is to have a very clear compensation plan and abide by it scrupulously.

#5 Separate your business life from your personal life. This can be hard to do but not doing it will cost you in the long-run. Your business is a tool to accomplish a set of goals that are determined by you (and your fellow stock holders). It’s amazingly easy, over time, to lose the reason you have your business in the first place.

Derek is currently putting the first FE build of the AI (first build I've checked in) through its paces.

It's a 3 person game, tiny map.

We'll see how it goes.

As the 0.26 version makes clear, the AI is about 25% done.

I'd put the odds of him winning at about 50/50.

The AI is still pretty piss poor compared to what it'll eventually be.

The AI still has a long….long….long away to go.

But finally, today I had my first satisfying defeat by the AI.  Now, I wasn’t playing to win, I was just messing around. But seeing the AI finally able to project force this effectively is something I was never able to do in even GalCiv (I never was allowed this kind of time either).

Now, the AI never would have gotten this golden opportunity if I hadn’t arrogantly thought that my sovereign and flag force could take out a set of large trolls. I discovered the new (in FE) “prone” hit which is really devastating (basically a knock down where your unit loses a turn).

It is interesting how important champions have become because when my force was defeated, so too was much of my kingdom’s magical capability.

The spell book at the bottom right now represents the combined ability of all your units. This is, as you can imagine, a big deal. And thus, losing a champion is a big deal.

It’s also really fun because, frankly, I’m not that familiar with how many magical spells there are (I’m basically in the same position as other players for now). I deal with magical spells from the AI’s perspective which is through analysis (that is, the AI coder doesn’t care about specific spells, it cares about what is in the XML).

Now, again, I apologize for graphics and such as I have a lot of the lighting and such disabled as I play in the debugger.

Noooooooooooooo! So few spells now. NOOOOO. I miss my champions. They’re not just “tough units”. They are instruments of victory.

Mind you, this is a “small” battle.

Mind you, I’m playing in the debugger step by step so don’t use this as an example of the fluidity or whatever of battles...and there’s no sound…

The AI gets a lucky win.

Population (I’m red):

Research:

Military Might:

Toby (Associate Producer) and Derek (Producer & Lead Designer)

The AI is now “playing” the game. It just doesn’t play the game well.

Below are the end game graphs screens of me (red) vs. AI (blue).

One of the really nice things these days is how easy it is to take screenshots and videos and pass them around.

We use Jing made by TechSmith (a fellow Michigan software company).

Two examples from today:

Problem:

http://screencast.com/t/UZJ9cp5d11m

Monsters of the wildlands aren’t finding random tiles in their areas to walk around.

Here’s what it looks like in the debugger:

http://screencast.com/t/Zv4B1zEE

Stardock is a pretty silly place to “work” at.  So my new rule of thumb is, blame Derek for all my problems.  Compiler problem? Derek. VPN issue? Derek. Incredibuild glitch? You get the idea.

Now, if the airs are let out of my tires again…well, who knows what caused that.

…

Anyway, thanks to Derek, I get to work primarily on the parts of our games I’m traditionally used to working on.  With GalCiv, I knew exactly what I wanted.  With War of Magic, we kind of did the kumbaya approach (everyone gets to throw in something..).  In FE, Derek has the final word. And it has made a tremendous difference in terms of focusing the game design.

Sometimes, it means features get cut.  For example, I wanted to let players and the AI to trade items back and forth. But that could turn into a real time sink code-wise for all involved so we have had to put it up.  That leaves more time to focus on other parts of the AI.

Of course, my view of the world is ugly. Everything is turned off. But every day I get to see new stuff.

I don’t even know what this is, new today. Cool!

It is interesting to see where AI design and game design meet.  As the advocate for AI rights, I am constantly requesting game design changes. Sometimes they get in, sometimes they don’t.

I’ve been really pushing for a way to let players (ahem computer players especially) fast build things. I hate having to wait 18 turns or whatever for something to build if I’m “rich”. Punish me massively but let me get things out quickly if possible.

The tech tree and magical spells area are another area that I lobby a lot because the AI can do so much with these that you…humans…won’t because you guys just aren’t good enough at math to come up with optimal strategies compared to computer players. So the “richer” the tech tree and the more varied the spells are, the better.

Today’s updates to the tech tree start it out smaller but have it grow. You can now see how many turns it takes to get somewhere with your current research.

The AI is doing a lot of work on “scouting” the world. But today’s question is, how intelligently will the AI make use of this scouting? The AI can uncover squares quickly…

But it does not good if it squanders its knowledge.

and so…

FAIL.

Back to the drawing board.